


All Good Fellows

by Thimblerig



Series: Soldiers Three [3]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Author's Favorite, Backstory, European Mythology & Folklore, F/M, Gen, Horror, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:58:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4338449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He's heard silver bells ringing with Aramis' quick movements and brushed may-blossom off the man's shoulders along with the snow; he's seen blood well up in Athos' footprints...</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Good Fellows

**Author's Note:**

> There are some dark themes in here: skip to the bottom if you want to check for specific warnings, or just start reading if you'd rather the surprise.

_The Lily-in-Splendour is roaring, crammed full of Musketeers celebrating the commissioning of a new member. For once d'Artagnan is not the youngest man there, and he sits with Porthos at a table near Athos' shadowy corner, feeling almost paternal as they watch Aramis urge the new boy to drink, drink another cup down._

_"How did you three become friends," he asks Porthos suddenly. "I don't think you ever said."_

_Porthos shifts in his seat._

_"Some people just feel right," he says at last. "You know how it is."_

 

1\. The Comte de la Fere Is Dead, Is Dead.

He was the lord of the domain, possessed of the high and low justice, their defender in war and their final magistrate in peace. No-one blamed him for hanging his wife, not even - at times - that straight and beautiful lady, pulled away from her brother-in-law with hot blood on her hands and conveyed to her death arrayed in white, too proud and angry even to spit curses at the confessor sent to her. No-one blamed him for hanging his wife: only himself. 

They found him that night in a fallow field, swinging from a dry thorn. It would have been poetic, perhaps, to bury them all together, him, his wife, and his young brother - plant rosebushes and briars on them, to grow and tangle as they willed. But the priest would not have it. There was to be no-one who died outside the grace of God let lie in this consecrated ground, he said. And so the arguments raged for three days, at which point - it was said much, _much_ later, when the tale was a curious fable and not a real and present horror - at which point the lord became so irritated with the fuss that he rose off his slab in the cold cellar and walked upstairs for his dinner.

Olivier d'Athos de la Fere did not last long after that. His servants made him nervous and he... _terrified_ them. On a blustery Friday he tied a scarf as blue as forget-me-nots around his hanging scar, signed the death certificate of the Comte, and simple Athos rode away. The people of Pinon avoided his shadow as he rode through the village, and covered their eyes so that they would not see which way he went.

He drowns his thirst with dark rich wine, and stays out of the bright sun when he can, for propriety's sake. (It hurts his eyes; no-one could blame him for that, with the hang-over he carries.) He tells himself, each time he draws his sword, to think not of the lives he is taking, but of those he is allowing to live.

It has to be enough. He will make it so.

 

2\. The Sedge Is Withered

There was a flusterment of women at the gates of the convent, talking, arguing, taking the poor lost Queen by the hand... their Mother Superior bent her neck to no-one and she disliked shutting the gates of her convent, even at great need. Her nuns, dutiful as they were, were anxious from that. Thus, it caused barely a ripple in them when their leader, that fierce old woman, looked more closely at one of the Musketeers and exclaimed, "Rene?"

 _"Isabelle..."_ Aramis breathed. It was the cry of a broken bird.

He couldn't breathe after that, and his chest pounded (that _never_ happened!); he let Athos do the talking, until the man inquired about guns in the convent. 

"We have one musket," said the Mother Superior briskly.

"Still potting rabbits?" asked Aramis, with a quirk of his mouth.

"That, and Protestants," she answered. And he could feel his friend stare.

Athos moved briskly about the convent to order the defense of the Queen and the other women. Aramis could see that he was worried and trying not show it, so he put his hand briefly on his friend's shoulder. Athos looked at him sidelong. "Go with the Mother Superior to the vantage point of which she spoke. You are the best shot. I will talk with the young novice about the brandy." Aramis nodded, swallowed, and followed his friend's orders, trailing the elderly woman to a high stone room with a beautiful view of the surrounding country-side.

"I'm reloading," she stated, laying out powder and shot on the table. "We need young eyes at the window." Aramis winced.

"Will you take my confession?" he asked, gazing out into the woods.

"We have a priest come in for that."

"Even so."

"Speak, then, Rene."

Aramis skipped the formalities, the lesser sins, and went to the heart of it. "I was travelling through Broceliande at the time," he said. "I'd heard a rumour that you'd...?" She shook her head minutely. "Well then. It was the heart of summer, very warm, and one afternoon, to rest out the heat of the day, I lay myself down under an apple tree.

"I woke up in the still gloaming and there was a Lady on a grey horse, watching me. There were silver bells braided all through its mane, which chimed every time it tossed its head. When I asked Her if She were the Queen of Heaven She laughed at me, very sweetly, and asked me for a kiss." He added, very calmly, "After that, one thing rather led to another."

A group of Gallagher's mercenaries came out of the undergrowth, then, and he spent several minutes in relative silence, rapid-firing the muskets as fast as she could press a reloaded gun into his hands. 

When the powder-smoke had calmed, the Mother Superior picked up the thread. "When the Lady took you," she prompted.

"When I followed the Lady," Aramis corrected gently. "You were right not to stay, Isabelle, for I've no bottom to me, no follow-through." A shudder rippled through his shoulders, then his eyes quirked and he fired again. Another mercenary fell in his tracks.

"It was very beautiful there," he said, "in Her home under the Hill. She grew fruit trees like you never saw - the blossom and fruit and bud all on the same branch. There were tiny rivers like silver thread twining together, and lions lay about with lambs sleeping curled up at their sides. But I dreamed of sunlight and stars, of the fierce wind on my face. I _ached_ for it. After a year I asked Her leave to go. She kissed my hands then, for the sweetness of my company and the bitterness of leaving." He fired again, and took the second gun from her.

"I woke up on a hill in winter. There was an icicle on my nose, Isabelle, you would have laughed." The Mother Superior quirked one eyebrow. "I returned home but it... wasn't. I'd lost ten years, somehow, and my father was dead. My brother and his sons were running the place quite well without me. You were still gone. Since then I've been rather... stuck."

He fired again. "She kissed my hands when she let me go, kissed each palm and told me she was giving me a blessing and a curse. She told me that I would always want what I might not have, while I travelled the sunlit lands, and that I could not die. A blessing and a curse She gave me, Isabelle, and I cannot tell which is which.

"I thought of seeking forgiveness, I had all this time, decades of it. I thought to win myself an appointment with the Pope and beg or buy absolution. But one cannot be forgiven in the sacrament of confession if one does not first repent and - and I still love her."

"You love _all_ women," said the Mother Superior, very dry.

"I cannot help it, you are so beautiful," he said, with almost a smile, but it dropped. "And so I remain outside of God's grace." He fired again. "Do - do you think it might happen? Someday?" he asked, almost shyly.

"Can blossoms spring from dry wood?" she replied.

"I am sorry." And he said nothing more.

MMM

The next year, in the early spring, the Mother Superior sent one of the novices, her grand-daughter Isabelle-Marie, to Paris with a gift for Aramis. It was a branch from a weeping cherry-tree that the convent tended and loved well. The branch was very beautiful, the tender blossoms gracing the bare twigs with all the joy of spring defeating winter. 

Aramis would have adored it, but he was not to be found in the city at that time.

 

3\. Born To Strange Sights.

Porthos always saw further through a brick wall than most. His mother told him it was because of the royal blood in him, or sometimes she said it was the _real_ blood. Her French wasn't very good and the child Porthos was when she died never felt the need to press her on it. It wasn't as if he were the only one with gold in his eyes, not in a place like the Court of Miracles, which had gained its title from far more than the flim-flam artists and simoners that sheltered in its uncertain embrace.

There was an old lady there who lived only on dew and scraps of food brought by ravens; and a doctor who had settled in the Court one step ahead of a charge of witch-craft on account of all of his patients lived, even the man who'd been disembowelled so his guts fell across the street like loops of sausage. Twin sisters two alleys over used to call rain with the cracking of their finger joints; little yellow-haired Flea could read the currents of the air, making a practice of running through the Court at all hours, eyes tight shut. In the Court of Miracles, Porthos' sight was almost mundane. (Charon never did any of that, back then, and treated it all with a knowing smirk, just like the trumpery and make-up the professional beggars used. If he didn't understand the trick of it _now_ he surely would later, that smirk said. Porthos wondered, after, if that was why Charon did what he did - too busy looking underneath the gilt of a thing to see the true gold in it. Or maybe he was just tired of tricks.)

The wider world has sights of its own - he remembers that time hunting with the King, when a white deer dashed across their path chased by red-eared hounds... Louis had complained then that the woods were too quiet and boring and Porthos had kept his flipping trap _shut_ , just steered them outta there 'cause he could hear silver hunting horns and he really didn't want to meet the huntsmen. He stopped a whole night at the Siege of La Rochelle once, watching a procession across the dark waters, a long line of hooded figures, great ones, whose heads blocked out the stars. Old gods? Saints? Porthos has never been book-smart and he doubts he'll ever know who they were, but he was wrung out with it after their passing, at the wonder and the grief of it.

He doesn't talk about it. He didn't need to in the Court, on account of they all knew; and he really shouldn't outside, on account of how they _don't_ know and making it clear to them'd make things real bad, real quick.

So if he's heard silver bells ringing with Aramis' quick movements and brushed may-blossom off the man's shoulders along with the snow; if he's seen blood well up in the foot-prints Athos leaves behind: blood and the blooming of tiny white lilies? Everyone has their secrets. Porthos knows to keep his peace. But there's a comfort to their presence, a familiarity in their strangeness.

Porthos always did like flowers.

 

4\. Lupus Dei

_"Some people just feel right," says Porthos, shifting in his seat. "You know how it is."_

When he was a youth, d'Artagnan had travelled all the way to the city of Bordèu. (He had not been d'Artagnan then, not the head of the family at all, just Young Charles to everyone that mattered.) His father had taken him there, Young Charles, through the vineyards to learn what good wine tasted like, and they had seen all the beautiful buildings of the Black Pearl of Aquitaine and then, because d'Artagnan _père_ was a serious man who did things for many reasons, they had gone to the friary of St Michael the Archangel to see the _loup-garou_. 

The Franciscans did not want to let them in, they fussed and fluttered, but his father had a letter from their priest and he was very patient, and very firm. Eventually they gave way and let them into an enclosure where a wild man dressed in rags shambled and rolled. His father had pointed out the roughness of Jean Grenier's knuckles and hands from meeting the ground and the length and toughness of his fingernails. Young Charles saw the yellowness of his eyes all on his own.

His father had talked to Grenier quite politely then, for he was a courteous man. He had asked how Grenier had achieved his transformation, and where, and why he had chosen it. He had asked how many children he had killed, and if Grenier remembered their names. He wanted to know Grenier's favourite cut of meat. The _loup-garou_ answered freely, d'Artagnan recalls now, and seemed so pleased to have an ear to talk to, though he had been quite rude and not looked at the old man at all. Young Charles had held his gaze instead, and neither had blinked until d'Artagnan _père_ thanked Grenier and turned to go.

The _loup-garou_ had run at them, then, his arms spread wide and his mouth gaping red, and fallen back suddenly at a great clashing blow from his father's walking stick, who then calmly walked them both outside and barred the gate. Then that kindly old man had gripped Young Charles' shoulder hard enough to bruise, gripped him and shaken him a little. "Remember, boy," his father had rasped, _"this is not our way."_

Young Charles was a wild boy, and d'Artagnan (head of the family, now, _all_ of the family) is a wild man: a loper and a grinner, he likes his fights, does d'Artagnan, and his improbable adventures. But he remembers the taste of good wine, also. He remembers the _loup-garou_. He remembers his father: the gentleman and the farmer. 

In the depths of last winter, on St. Lucy's Eve, d'Artagnan had run and run and run in the night, bare feet scraping and his red tongue hanging out. He found the Gate to Hell in Paris (a city like Paris? of _course_ it has a Gate to Hell) down through the brick walled catacombs, past the sorted stacks of bones and skulls, he ran through the passages with the others of his kind, loping and panting, 'til they fell into the Under-Earth, that great and gaping place where tree roots hang from the sky and words can barely shape the place, for they are the Hounds of God and this is their calling, on three nights of the turning of the year to run themselves into madness, to fight the devil underground that the crops might come up... as his father ran, so does he.

_"You know how it is."_

Yes, d'Artagnan knows how it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings:
> 
> Part 1: suicide, undead;  
> Part 2: dubious consent because deities are traditionally difficult to say no to; past infidelity;  
> Part 3: a brief but graphic mention of a gory event;  
> Part 4: discussion of historical murder of children, discussed cannibalism, oh, and giving wine to a minor, though in small quantities. *shrug* It was a different time.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> I'm being hard on Athos here - there are historical accounts of people surviving hangings (scroll down this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema for the story of Anne Greene, for example), and also people believed to be dead for several days and 'miraculously' reviving, without anyone making accusations of undeath. On the other hand, back in the day, people judged suicide _harshly_. According to wikipedia.com (our friend), "In the Middle Ages, the Christian church excommunicated people who attempted suicide and those who died by suicide were buried outside consecrated graveyards. A criminal ordinance issued by Louis XIV of France in 1670 was far more severe in its punishment: the dead person's body was drawn through the streets, face down, and then hung or thrown on a garbage heap..." The time of this story is a little before the mass panics about vampires in Europe, which is probably why Athos got to keep his head. Suicide was one of the (many) ways folklore said a vampire could form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_folklore_by_region#Medieval_and_early_modern_Europe
> 
>  _to think not of the lives he is taking, but of those he is allowing to live._ \- a phrase attributed to Athos in one of the _Man in the Iron Mask_ movies, (the Leonard di Caprio one), which I adore with the deep and true love of someone who knows that parts of it are going to annoy the shit out of her every time she watches it. _My love is like the ocean._
> 
> Aramis' story is two parts Tannhauser, one part Thomas the Rhymer, and a sprinkle of my own invention (I made up the blessing and the curse, for example.) There are a fair few stories of handsome men invited to fairyland by powerful, beautiful women, and they often end badly for the man. In the Tannhauser story, he eventually confesses to the Pope, who says there is more chance of his crozier blossoming into flowers than of the knight being forgiven. Three days later, the crozier blossomed, but Tannhauser had already gone back under the hill. The Mother Superior is a little kinder.
> 
>  _Bordèu_ \- the Gascon pronunciation of Bordeaux, apparently. Fanfic and its research, sigh...
> 
>  _Jean Grenier_ \- a historical werewolf and self-confessed murderer of children, details here: http://www.werewolfpage.com/myths/grenier.html
> 
>  _Hounds of God_ \- I'm riffing off the testimony of Thiess of Kaltenbrun, more details here: http://faoladh.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/hounds-of-god-werewolf-ritual-according.html Time and place are a bit off, but he claimed to be part of a _tradition_ , so...
> 
> MMM
> 
> I don't normally write stuff this dark: thanks for sticking with me.


End file.
